Emperor Marcus Aurelius tours the eastern provinces, traveling in the company of his wife and son from Alexandria to Athens, where, like Hadrian before him, he, together with Commodus, is initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries (though that esoteric religious cult does not seem to have impinged at all upon his philosophical views).

The empress Faustina, who had been with her husband in the Danubian wars as well, dies during the journey.

Great public honors are bestowed upon her in life and in death, and in his Meditations, Marcus speaks of her with love and admiration. (The ancient sources accuse her of infidelity and disloyalty—complicity, in fact, with Avidius Cassius—but the charges are implausible.)